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When wool talks sense I listen.

It’s a Saturday in October. It’s an unexpected 20+ degrees. There’s only one thing to do:

Laundry and spinning under the beech. There’s a robin keeping me company, he sings all around me 🙂

I’m spinning green dyed Dutch sheep. It’s not Texelaar and it’s not Heideschaap. It’s fibres are medium long to short and quite curly and I used the wool picker and the drum carder on them.

I’m doing Long Draw on my vintage Louet:

Reduced the pull of Irish tension by lacing the leader a couple of times through the hooks. Now I can get a lot of twist without hardly any pull.

It’s not strictly Long Draw as I’m not spinning from rolags but from a batt. The fibres are places in random directions though and the way I spin it is surely Long Draw. It feels like chewing gum, so that’s the right way.

I spun a practise skein earlier, just to find out if it would work, spinning Long Draw on this Louet. It does:

35 m of 2ply, good for needles 4 to 7 mm.

The practise skein hangs on my wheel, for reference during spinning. Sometimes you need to keep reminding yourself of the weight you want in your singles and in your ply.

I often buy socks from Bloem. She knits socks the way I like it: quite dense fabric with a heel flap. She supports a good cause with her sold projects. And she enjoys to knit matching socks. I don’t. But I do like wearing them.

PS.

I gave the handspun mitts to Francis, out organic farmer, today and she was delighted 🙂